Today on The Flatline, Rick Hughes explores the crucial difference between wisdom that comes from human rationale versus the wisdom rooted in divine scripture. Delving into historical and current spiritual dynamics, Rick underscores the timeless need for spiritual maturity and offers guidelines for acquiring wisdom that can spark transformation in personal, national, and global contexts. This episode serves as a wake-up call for those ready to move beyond casual faith practices into a deeper, more informed Christian walk.
Welcome to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good morning and welcome to The Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes. For the next few minutes, I’m going to ask you to stick around. It’ll be 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education without any type of manipulation. We don’t play games. We’re not trying to hustle you for money. We’re not trying to get you to join up, give it up, fess it up, nothing like that. We’re just trying to get you to listen up, listen to the information. My job is to verify and identify the plan of God for you, for your family, for your nation. Your job is to orient and adjust should you desire to do so, but that’s up to you. But I can promise you this. I’ll be accurate. I won’t mislead you. I won’t lead you into some kind of goofy stuff. I will show you what the Bible says and let you figure it out on your own. But it’s my prayer that you are the person I’m looking for. This show, I’m always on the search. I’m searching for people that are hungry to learn God’s Word. That’s why we do this show. Those sort of people can become what I call part of the pivot that can deliver this nation from the coming disaster. A pivot potential, a pivot member, a mature believer that God can count on like Gideon. Gideon was a pivot person and God counted on him to deliver Israel from the Midianite army. And that’s what God is looking for, a few good men and women that love him, that love his word, that want to grow to spiritual maturity and glorify Jesus Christ to the maximum. Unfortunately, we live in a nation that seems to be rejecting the plan of God today. that’s what we’ve been talking about the spiritual climate change in america in the year 2019. what’s going on well let’s pick up where we left off last week and see if we can dig into this a little bit because the key word is wisdom no one wants wisdom no one wants understanding no one wants knowledge people are not willing to get it they just seem to want to go by their own wisdom and their own knowledge. They think they know all the answers. And as we started off in this verse, in this study, we quoted a verse, and I’ll see if I can go back to it real quick for you here. We quoted a verse that was very, very instrumental. It said, in the heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are. America is showing the world how stupid we are. Why are we stupid? Because everything that used to be evil is now accepted as good and everything that used to be good is now being touted as evil. And we have began to formulate plans for a successful nation based on the wisdom of fools. And we are in trouble because we’ve neglected the divine establishment principles that made this country what it is, freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism being the four critical components of the divine institutions. So the Bible warns us, do not be wise in your own eyes. That’s human viewpoint, Proverbs 3.8. Do not be wise in your own eyes. What’s wrong with looking to the Bible for answers? What is it that is so offensive that people don’t want to read the Bible? They don’t want the Ten Commandments in a school. They don’t want the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. What’s wrong with that? Why is that so offensive? Do people not realize that Satan has done a tremendous job of dividing this country And he’s used people that have organizations like Freedom From Religious Foundation that as soon as anyone in leadership begins to offer a prayer or have a Bible on their desk, they get slapped with a letter of threat of a lawsuit. It’s pitiful. And that’s where we stand today. Wise in our own eyes, human viewpoint thinking. Fear the Lord, the Bible says. Respect him, in other words. And depart from evil, that’s Satan’s cosmic system. You go to the right, go to the left. You go to the right, that’s God’s wisdom. You go to the left, that’s the satanic cosmic system. Satan is a wonderful counterfeiter. He counterfeits God’s plan. He can’t offer you what God does, but he can offer you something else. God offers you eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Satan offers you eternal life maybe through organized religion if you’re good enough. And that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It’s a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should brag about it. Paul picked up this same concept in Ephesians 5, 17 and said, don’t be a fool. Don’t be foolish, Ephron. the Greek word, but understand what the will of the Lord is. How can you understand it if you don’t know it? And how can you know it if you don’t learn it? And how can you learn it if you don’t hear it? And that’s what Satan has been successful at doing, shutting off the teaching of the Word of God in our schools, in our public arena, even in a football game, somebody’s offended if they have a prayer. It’s crazy. And so it’s not a lack of knowledge, but the inability to use that knowledge wisely that’s going on. People know about God. They can look around, and Romans tells you that. You can look into the stars and realize somebody made that. You didn’t make it. Somebody else made it. But then you reject that knowledge, and you don’t use it wisely. And you don’t want to know where the information comes from, what the knowledge is. And somebody says, well, let’s try reading the Bible. And then you reject that. You are wrong. You are making a critical mistake. That word fool or moron or moros denotes stupidity. but also it can denote ignorance and willful, willful, I said willful rebellion against God and his will. And we quoted Romans 1, 18 through 32 and ask you to read that for yourself. Where it says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. Not interested in anything God has to say. They’re interested in going down the my way highway. They’re interested in somebody’s human viewpoint thinking rather than the scriptures. Now, God has given you the opportunity to understand his wisdom. He’s recorded it for you in the Bible, in the scriptures. It’s called the mind of Christ in Philippians 2.5, and that’s what the disciples were tasked with doing, recording the thoughts of Christ, the words of Christ, the deals with Christ, what he did. So it’s all there for us if we take the opportunity to learn it, if we take the opportunity to understand it. He’s even equipped men with a gift of pastor-teacher who can go into the Scriptures and into the original languages of the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic and explain to you what these words mean that you don’t understand, whether so everest thou goest. That’s the thundering diction of the King James, whether so everest thou goest. I mean, that’s not how it was written. People get violent and say the King James Bible was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me. Well, I’m sorry, the King James Bible was written way after the life of Paul. So the scripture, as in the original languages, as close as we have to the canon of scripture, the original languages that we have and we know, you gotta have someone that can explain the isagogics of these words, what they mean, such as love, love, love. You know, we gotta love each other, but there are four words for love in the Greek New Testament. I mean, it’s just constantly you’ve got to have someone that understands it. A well-qualified pastor is what all of us have to have. I have one. You must have one. There’s not a morning goes by, rarely, that I don’t get up and listen to my pastors. I put in a DVD and study his teachings as he teaches in his church each week. And I’m watching. I’m learning. I’m growing. There never is a time when you quit growing. So God gives us that opportunity to grow. And we learn to respect the Lord, and that’s the beginning of all knowledge right there. But listen to the next part of Proverbs 1-7. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Why will the America we know not survive if it continues on the current path? Because we are being led by fools. If we continue on the current path, not the administration, I’m not talking about the president, I’m talking about the House, the Senate, the Congress, the House of Representatives. Most of our leaders reject even the notion that God’s wisdom is found in Christ. They reject that concept completely. Why will we not survive if we continue on the current path? Because most of our leaders reject the idea of God’s wisdom concerning those four divine institutions that I talked about, such as marriage between a man and a woman, no one else. Marriage as an institution of God has given away today to humanism and diversity. and the concept of the family has fallen apart today and thus no authority structure and if there’s no authority then who a kid raises you know he’s just no discipline you know that I’ve said before the biggest child abuse is to raise a child send him out into the devil’s world and not arm him with divine viewpoint not give him a chance not let him know what the Bible says not give him the opportunity to choose at least Which road he wants to follow because if he doesn’t know his choices He’s going to go the wrong way So most Americans are going to surrender their freedom for security and that’s what we’re looking at today So the words of Solomon ring true. How long will you that are simple love your simple ways? How long will you mockers delight in mocking God because fools hate knowledge? So what can we do about the future? Well, in Ecclesiastes 9, 14, and 15, my pastor’s been teaching a great series on this. One poor man with wisdom delivered a city. Just one. One poor man with wisdom. You can be that person with wisdom that can deliver your city, your nation, your family, your home, but you have to do this. Number one, you can’t buy it. And you cannot inherit wisdom. You must acquire it for yourself before you can have any sort of impact. You must acquire wisdom. And what is wisdom? It’s simply you acquiring the mind of Christ or fulfilling Romans 12, 3. Stop thinking of yourself in terms of arrogance beyond what you should think. but think in terms of sanity as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from his word. Wisdom is you rejecting the control of arrogance in your life. Wisdom is you saying no to self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption, you saying no to these things, and you saying yes to what the word of God has to say. Wisdom is simply you acquiring the mind of Christ. And all wisdom comes from knowledge, All wisdom comes from knowledge and produces insight and discernment. Do you hear me? Wisdom comes from knowledge and produces insight and discernment. Insight and discernment. Discernment gives you the ability to see what other people don’t see. Wisdom is a byproduct of your personal love for God because the Bible says if you love me… you will obey me and my mandates are not hard, they’re not grievous. So 1 John 5, 3, if you love me, you’ll obey me and my mandates are not hard. So here’s a suggestion. Do you want to really live life? Psalm 34, 12 through 16 tells you how. If you want to really live a long and happy life, here it is, then make sure you don’t speak evil words or use deceptive speech. Turn away from evil and do what is right. Strive for peace and promote peace. And I go on to quote now. The Lord pays attention to the godly and hears their cry for help. But the Lord opposes the evildoer and wipes out all memory of them from the earth. Did you get that? Psalm 34, 12 through 16. I’m going to read it one more time. Do you want to really live? Would you like to live a long, happy life? Really live a long, happy life? Then make sure you don’t speak evil words or use deceptive speech. Turn away from evil. Deceptive speech, evil words, a public lie, that goes on so much today in politics, you can’t believe it. If you yell it loud enough, long enough, and often enough, people believe it. It’s unbelievable, the strife, the contention, the division that’s in this country today. So you want to live a long, happy life? Quit running people down. Quit lying about other people. Turn away from evil. Do what’s right. Strive for peace and promote it. And the second part of that verse is the Lord is paying attention to the godly, and he hears their cry for help. This means your prayer will not go unanswered. As you pray for our nation, as you pray for our president, as you pray for your family, God hears your prayer. In 2 Peter 3.15, Peter tells us we need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Proverbs 2, 1 through 6, listen carefully. My son, Solomon says, if you will hear my words and if you will treasure my mandates. He heard the word if, if, if. If you will hear my words and if you will treasure my mandates within you so that you incline your ear to wisdom. and apply your heart to understanding and you will cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding. If you seek wisdom as you would silver and search for her as you would a hidden treasure, then, then you will understand the fear of the Lord. Then you will find the knowledge of God for the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. and he is a shield to those who walk uprightly. He guards the path of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity and every good path. Those are the words of Solomon written hundreds of years ago. So what happened to your wisdom? Where did your wisdom go? Has it given you any insight to God’s will for your life or the direction that God wants you to go in your life when dealing with other people? Or do you fail people testing because you have no wisdom? You never learned how to use impersonal love. The problem-solving device, number eight, you never learned how to use impersonal love. Has it given you insight, your wisdom? Did you get distracted or discouraged from growing spiritually or just plain tired of going to church and tired of going to Bible study? You got other things going on that are more important, don’t you? Your children, and you got to go to workout class, and you got to go to work, and by the time this time comes around at night, you’re too tired. In the morning, you’re too tired. So you’ve allowed Satan to divide and conquer you through the failure of your own spiritual life. Your family’s divided, your thoughts are divided, and you’re in deep trouble. That’s exactly what’s going on in this nation. And sometimes Satan divides and conquers us through the failure of people that we admire. We see them fail like Peter failed the Lord and the disciples saw it and they all got a little upset and Peter ran. People said, no, I don’t know him. I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Even when the Lord warned him that he was going to do that. Did you, you, not Peter, did you fail to use wisdom of impersonal love and let the justice of God handle the details in a people test that you faced? You know, here’s the principle. How could you ever be that one wise man that delivers the nation? How could you ever have an invisible historical impact in a nation that’s failing like America if you can’t control your own sin nature? I mean, there have been thousands of hours of the Word of God taught flowing from pulpits. Where were you when the pastors were watering that flock? The truth is this, without an active current spiritual life, you’re not helping anyone, not even yourself. Look, even the disciples got distracted from time to time. They argued over who were the greatest and who did Jesus love the most, but Did he really come back to life and they got tired of waiting for him in Galilee so they went fishing? They’d been sent there to fish for men, not for fish. Even pastors get distracted, especially when they think they’re smarter and wiser than those who mentored them. So remember the words of Paul to young Pastor Timothy. This is critical. Study to show thyself approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of truth. Blind arrogance can cause you to see things that are not there. I’m saying it again. Blind arrogance can cause you to see things that are not there. This is true for pastors. A wise pastor produces a wise congregation that imparts blessing by association to a dying nation. A wise pastor produces a wise congregation that imparts blessing by association to a dying nation. The invisible impact you could have as a mature believer on this nation is incredible. Invisible impact of you, invisible God, invisible assets, invisible power, that equals invisible heroes, which you must be if we’re going to leave our children or our grandchildren a future with any opportunity. Because the Bible says you can have a personal impact in history by being a blessing by association to others. Remember what David said, surely goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life. Anybody in his periphery was blessed, blessing by association. You can have a historical impact. That means that your life can be a blessing to the client nation, USA, good old America. Your spiritual life is the key here. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the future of this country. You can have an international impact by blessing, by association to non-client nations, by means of missionary activity when we support, pay for, fund missionaries that go to nations that don’t necessarily worship God. You can have an angelic impact by being a witness for God in the appeal trial of Satan, and you could have a heritage impact by being a blessing by association to your loved ones even after you’re dead. That’s true. So with available assets provided by God’s grace, There’s only one reason why we fail, and that’s because we have negative volition. Negative volition. We’re not interested, we’re not hungry, we’re distracted, we’re divided, and we’re failing. This client nation to God is blessed by a pivot of mature believers whose invisible historical impact is the key to the function of the American and the key to the perpetuation of this nation. And so again, as you go, as your life goes, and as any believer in any generation, so goes the history of that nation. So how goes your spiritual life? You know, this is where we mess up. The problem is not sin in America. You know, point your finger and say, oh, those people and those people and look what they’re doing, look what they’re doing, look what they’re doing. The problem is not sin in America. The problem is distracted Christians. Those who cannot and do not maintain their momentum. remember second chronicles 7 14 if my people that are called by my name will humble themselves turn from their wicked ways and seek my face and i’ll hear their prayer and heal their land you’re the solution you it’s not the sin it’s you it’s because you have no desire to gain wisdom you have no desire to get understanding You just want to be a casual Christian and play church. As goes your spiritual life, so goes the history of this nation. Where are you? Are you hungry for word? Are you hungry to grow? Are you hungry to become a mature believer? Are you hungry to be that one man that God can count on? Because inconsistent spiritual growth leads to an inconsistent spiritual life. And I can tell you the first thing that goes in your life is failing to study the word of God, failing to show up for church. The second thing is the rate of forgetting gets greater than the rate of learning. And the next thing is you forget to confess your sins. You forget to rebound. And then you lose all your momentum and you replace your spiritual momentum with your hobby, with your children, or chasing the details of life. Has that happened to you? Have you lost your spiritual momentum? Maintaining spiritual momentum is never easy, I promise you. And there are some mandates in Scripture if you hope to fulfill God’s plan and purpose for your life, such as 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Grow is the Greek word oxano, and it is an imperative mood verb. It’s a present tense, which means there never is a time you’re not to grow. As long as you’re here, as long as you’re occupying space, as long as you’re breathing air, you are to grow spiritually. This imperative verb, oxano, It’s a mandate, not merely a suggestion. So there’s never a day in your life that you can skip growing spiritually. This mandate is for you to accumulate knowledge, grow in the grace and knowledge The mandate is to accumulate knowledge and also to understand grace. It’s not hard to see who understands grace when people testing comes along. I mean, you can be around someone a short period of time and find out if they know how to grace people out, if they know how to give people grace, the same kind of grace God gave them. And knowledge, like the knowledge of Matthew 7, keep your mouth shut, don’t judge other people, keep your nose out of other people’s business, Matthew 7, 1 through 5. That comes before the act of treating people in grace or letting God handle the details. So if you don’t have the knowledge of Matthew 7, 1 through 5, you don’t have the positive volition to obey it, then you’re a problem. You cannot have a historical impact if you can’t have a grace impact, especially on your own family and your own friends and your own local church. So it requires impersonal love and grace extended, just as God gave the same kind of grace to you. I mean, God didn’t get his feelings hurt when you ignored his will for your life, did he? But you get your feelings hurt when another believer doesn’t do what you want them to do. If you get your feelings hurt by another believer, that’s a tough test to pass if you don’t use the grace asset of impersonal love. Never, and I repeat this, never try to defend yourself. Even if the fact is untrue, don’t try to justify yourself. Let the Supreme Court of Heaven handle it. 2 Timothy 2.16 says, avoid another imperative mood verb. Avoid profane and idle babbling, for they will increase to more ungodliness and spread like cancer. That means don’t get into territory you don’t belong because it will divide and conquer your family, your church, your spiritual life. So just as we can only fall to our own internal self, so a local church, maybe like where you go, can only be destroyed from within. by people that get into idle babbling. In 2 Timothy 2.15, another mandate says, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And that word study is another imperative mood verb called spoudazo. Spoudazo is the Greek word. It means to make haste or to exert yourself, to do diligence. To make haste to do what? Show yourself approved. Dokimos, the Greek word, dokimos, approved. You know, in the ancient world, there was no banking system as we know it today, no paper money. All money was made from metal, heated with liquid, poured into molds, and allowed to cool. And when the coins were cooled, it was necessary to smooth off the uneven edges. The coins were comparatively soft, and of course, many people shaved them very close. in one century more than slightly more than 80 laws in one century more than 80 laws were passed in athens so stop the practice of whittling down the coins that were in circulation but some money changers were men of integrity who would not accept no counterfeit money they were men of honor who put only genuine full weight money into circulation these men were called the dokimas And this word is used here for Christians as he is to be seen by the world, a dokimas. And that’s quoting Donald Gray Barnhouse in his book on Romans, God’s Glory, page 18. So does your spiritual life meet God’s approval? Are you a dokimas? Are you rightly dividing the word of truth? Orthotomeo, when we get our word orthodontics, are you cutting straight? Are you getting it straight? Rightly dividing the scriptures? It’s your job to do that. Because if you can’t, then there’s trouble on the horizon. Your job is to pass on what you learn. And if you’re not learning it, how can you pass it on? How can you divide it rightly if you don’t have someone to teach it to you correctly? That’s why the need for a local pastor that understands the languages and can teach the word of God correctly. There’s a lot more to say and I’m running out of time quickly, but I pray you’re listening. I pray you’re paying attention and I pray this show will encourage you to be that one man with wisdom that can deliver this nation from what we face in the coming future. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
